Visitors brave the cliff's edge to watch workers for Drill Tech Drilling & Shoring, bore support rods into the face of the eroding cliff that is giving way under 320 Esplanade Avenue in Pacifica, Calif, on Sunday, January 24, 2010. The rods are hollow, allowing concret to be injected into the cliffside. The face of the cliff will then be sprayed with concrete and steel fibers that will create a new, more stable face for the cliff, preventing further erosion. For the past few weeks, workers have been battling to save an apartment building at 330 Esplanade Ave. in Pacifica, which is at the edge of a crumbling cliff.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

Visitors brave the cliff's edge to watch workers for Drill Tech...

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Workers for Drill Tech Drilling & Shoring, bore support rods into the face of the eroding cliff that is giving way under 320 Esplanade Avenue in Pacifica, Calif, on Sunday, January 24, 2010. The rods are hollow, allowing concret to be injected into the cliffside. The face of the cliff will then be sprayed with concrete and steel fibers that will create a new, more stable face for the cliff, preventing further erosion. For the past few weeks, workers have been battling to save an apartment building at 330 Esplanade Ave. in Pacifica, which is at the edge of a crumbling cliff.

Three apartment buildings teeter on the edge of a crumbling 80-foot cliff while storm-driven waves crash violently on the rocks below. Enormous cranes hover overhead as work crews frantically try to reinforce the sandy bluffs.

Meanwhile, the rain keeps coming. And with television cameras rolling, parts of Pacifica keep dissolving into the sea.

"We're witnessing creation in action," said Jim Scallon of San Mateo, one of the hundreds of gawkers who've flocked to a spot 15 miles south of San Francisco to watch the Pacific Ocean reclaim another chunk of the coastline.

"The ocean," he said, "is sculpting the shore, which it's done for millennia. We're just passengers."

Work crews continued their effort to hold the cliff in place Sunday, as onlookers from throughout the Bay Area trampled through ice plant to see if 320, 330 and 340 Esplanade Ave. would topple like Mother Tree in James Cameron's "Avatar."

The buildings stayed put, but the spectators seemed to be genuinely moved - to awe, humility and rumination about nature, the limits of engineering and the byproducts of living in paradise.

After all, this is no freak happening. In 1998, seven homes on Esplanade were demolished before they crashed into the ocean. And, in 2003, the same three apartments now in danger made headlines when 12 feet of cliff melted away.

"It's an epic battle between human ingenuity and the force of Mother Nature," said Riva Enteen, who lives across the street from the evacuated buildings. "This work they're doing here, it's a joke. It feels like little boys playing with toys and losing."

About 15 workers have been toiling through 12-hour days, drilling rebar 50 feet horizontally into the cliffs. When 250 rods have been inserted, crews plan to create a giant sea wall by coating the cliff face with fiber-reinforced concrete, a supervisor for one of the contracting firms, Drill Tech, said Sunday.

Workers also are piling large boulders below, hoping to protect the base of the cliff from the sea.

The owners of the buildings are funding the work, which will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, contractors said.

The owners could not be reached for comment Sunday. But according to property records, 340 Esplanade, which was the first to be evacuated on Dec. 17, sold in 2006 for $400,000. Its neighbor, 330 Esplanade, sold in 2004 for $1.45 million, and 320 Esplanade, half of which was evacuated last week, sold in 2002 for $3 million.

"You've got to look at the bright side," said Bob Georgiou, a real estate agent who drove from Walnut Creek to watch the geologic drama unfold. "These homes across the street will now have an ocean view."

At the Chit-Chat Cafe, across the street from the construction staging area, customers are transfixed. They have rearranged tables to see boulders being unloaded from trucks.